India's daughter, Suzette Jordan

Dear Suzette,

I took a couple of days' hiatus from the news last week and when I returned, the only thing that stood out from all the futile political wrangling, the comic pomposity and bombast of our leaders and the hilarious overarching fatuousness of our celebrities, was the fact that you had died at a Kolkata hospital of Meningoencephalitis, an inflammation of the meninges, and encephalitis, which affects the brain.

To say I felt as if some one had punched me in the gut when I heard the news would not be untrue.

"What kind of @#&*$ world do we live in," I asked myself, "where a woman as brave and beautiful as Suzette Jordan has to die of a pandemic disease when she has already suffered so much in her brief and courageous life?!"

Try as I might, I could not get over the irony of it all: You, a woman who'd been raped in a moving car, subsequently humiliated by society, authorities as well as your elected representatives (I hope Mamta Banerjee's shockingly insensitive remark that the rape was 'sajano ghotona' (staged) to embarrass her government, comes back to bite her where it hurts) and who had in the face of it all challenged the deep seated societal stigma that victims of rape faced, had to die, leaving behind two young daughters and with no justice delivered.

When you died, only three out of the five men, who had brutally raped you in 2012, had been apprehended, while the main accused and a cohort were still walking free.

"What kind of @#$%^ world?" I found myself asking again. At a time when India faces its walk of fire over rape, when films like India's Daughter are revealing how very deeply embedded in its psyche is the denigration and hatred of women, when we so urgently need an icon, a leader, a brave spirited soul to speak up against the atrocity, Suzette Jordan has to die of meningoencephalitis!

I remember seeing you that day at Tarun Tejpal's last and ill-fated THiNK conference in Goa as you took to the stage, along with fellow rape survivor Harish Iyer. Your wild, long mane framing your face like a halo, your cloak of anonymity so flamboyantly shrugged off. Who would have imagined that 20 minutes before going on stage, you had been a bundle of nerves and stage fright? What I saw was that you were nothing short of an iconic woman, fearless and strong.

"Why should I hide my identity when it was not even my fault? Why should I be ashamed of something that I did not give rise to? I was subjected to brutality, I was subjected to torture and I was subjected to rape, and I am fighting and I will fight." You had said when, in 2013, a year after you'd been raped and subjected to humiliation and scorn (the irony of it!), you had decided to shrug off your anonymity and look the world straight in its eye.

"I am the woman you raped and humiliated and scorned," you were saying. "I am not a victim. I am not a convenient shadow that you can forget. I am real. Not perfect. Not a doormat. Real. Look me in the eye, if you dare to."

"She had her bad days, never completed her education, she'd drink, she'd smoke, she'd sometimes get into my clothes too, she had 21 tattoos and a whole lot of scars from mutilation," wrote your daughter Rhea Jordan, in her tribute to you. "She was a rebel, she never had a permanent job. But my mother was one of a kind. She taught me to believe in myself: 'Never is it important to fit in, it's okay to stand out, and enjoy the view'," she'd say. Wrote your daughter.

"She was the only person I know who has from the beginning till the very end been true to herself, and learned from her mistakes, even though she made one too many of them. She showed me that no one is perfect, and that we shouldn't judge anyone. When I grow up, I want to be like my Mother, be REAL." Wrote your daughter—India's daughter—in a tribute that ought to be a clarion call for a brave new generation of women.

So perhaps, you did not die in vain, Suzette. Perhaps, you've helped raise an army of courageous women who will rise from the ashes of these times to say: 'I am the woman you raped and humiliated and scorned. I am not a victim. I am not a convenient shadow that you can forget. I am real. Not perfect. Not a doormat. Look me in the eye, if you dare to.'

So salute and good-bye to India's brave daughter and yes, there must be some nice bars where you are now, to hang out in, have one on me.

The monsters are sent to the other place, I'm sure.

Yours sincerely etc,